mmWave design has traditionally been a boutique technology used in satellite and defense applications. Lately that’s changing. It turns out the complex, high frequency capabilities of mmWave technology are a key enabler for the 5G wireless networks being deployed today. I discussed some of this backstory in a recent post about… Read More





CEO Interview: Dr. Shafy Eltoukhy of OpenFive
Dr. Shafy Eltoukhy has over 35 years of experience in the semiconductor industry. He served as VP and BU manager of the Analog Mixed Signal Group at Microsemi. He was the VP of Operations and Technology Development at Open-Silicon. He was the VP of Technology at Lightspeed Semiconductor where he joined the founding team that invented… Read More
Perforce Embedded DevOps Summit 2021 and the Path to Secure Collaboration on the Cloud
Perforce recently held their virtual Embedded DevOps Summit. There was a lot of great presentations across many disciplines. Of particular interest to me, and likely to the SemiWiki readership as well, was a presentation by Warren Savage entitled Secure Collaboration on a Cloud-based Chip Design Environment. I’ll provide … Read More
Maximizing ASIC Performance through Post-GDSII Backend Services
ASICs by definition are designed to meet the respective applications’ requirements. ASIC engineers deploy various design techniques to maximize performance, minimize power and reduce chip size. But is there more that can be done after the GDSII is taped out? A recent press release from Alchip Technology dated Feb 4, 2021 claims… Read More
NetApp Enables Secure B2B Data Sharing for the Semiconductor Industry
Data sharing between semiconductor companies and EDA software companies has been critical to the advancement of the industry. But it’s had security issues and associated loss of trust along the way. For instance, there have been cases of customer designs shared as a testcase finding their way into a product demo without the … Read More
Semiconductor Shortage – No Quick Fix – Years of neglect & financial hills to climb
– Semi Situation Stems from long term systemic neglect
– Will require much more than money & time than thought
– Fundamental change is needed to offset the financial bias
– Auto industry is just the hint of a much larger problem
Like recognizing global warming when the water is up to your neck
The problem… Read More
TECHTALK: Hierarchical PI Analysis of Large Designs with Voltus Solution
Power integrity analysis in large chip designs is especially challenging thanks to the huge dynamic range the analysis must span. At one end, EM estimation and IR drop through interconnect and advanced transistor structures require circuit-level insight—very fine-grained insight but across a huge design. At the other, activity… Read More
USB4 Makes Interfacing Easy, But is Hard to Implement
USB made its big splash by unifying numerous connections into a single cable and interface. At the time there were keyboard ports, mouse ports, printer ports and many others. Over the years USB has delivered improved performance and greater functionality. However, as serial interfaces became more popular and started being used… Read More
Features of Resistive RAM Compute-in-Memory Macros
Resistive RAM (ReRAM) technology has emerged as an attractive alternative to embedded flash memory storage at advanced nodes. Indeed, multiple foundries are offering ReRAM IP arrays at 40nm nodes, and below.
ReRAM has very attractive characteristics, with one significant limitation:
- nonvolatile
- long retention time
- extremely
It’s Energy vs. Power that Matters
In tiny devices, such as true wireless headphones, the battery life of the device is usually determined by the chips that execute the device’s functions. Professor Jan Rabaey of UC Berkeley, who wrote the book on low power, also coined the term “energy frugal” a number of years ago, and this term is even more valid today with the proliferation… Read More
Rapidus, IBM, and the Billion-Dollar Silicon Sovereignty Bet